Award Winning Courtyard House
De Rosee Sa have designed a new-build house on the site of a former garage in West London. The site is narrow and deep, located between terraced gardens on one side and a row of 16 lock-up garages on the other. The clients lived across the road and originally bought the site to prevent it from being developed by an aggressive developer.
A few years later, our clients realised there was an opportunity to build a new house on the site in a sensitive manner. They decided to develop the site themselves with a design-led brief. Planning policy restricted any development to a single storey building. In response, we proposed a basement at the rear of the site to meet the brief for a two-bedroom house.
Windows in the the boundary wall were not possible due to existing boundary walls and privacy issues. In response to this, our design proposed three courtyards and roof lights throughout to draw light into the house. An open-plan corridor runs the length of the house, and the main living spaces come off this circulation space, so the atmosphere is open, simple and bright.
The interior spaces give onto the new courtyards through steel and glass ‘Crittal’ style doors, providing long, internal views. Western red cedar battens clad the courtyard walls and pass inside to clad the small rooms (study, cloakroom, utility), adding a tactile element to the interiors. Granite setts are used in the external courtyards to complement the natural materials.
Herring bone floor